


But There Was Only One Bed

by Screegus



Series: The Relationship Wreck [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben is in denial, F/M, Feral Rey, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Ohhhh Boy, Redeemed Ben Solo, Romantic Comedy, but with, emotional ugliness, mostly....sort of.....we're getting there, post TLJ and... some other stuff that happens that im not gonna get into yet!, rey pursues a hot slice of solo, sort of a different take on rey, they have a pet porg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 23:22:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19451593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Screegus/pseuds/Screegus
Summary: “Oh come on, Ben, just think of this as - uh - a vacation! I’ve never been on a vacation before, you know.”“Rey, this isn’t a vacation. We’re pissing in the woods, battling for our next meal, and being stalked by starved animals in the night. Technically that makes this a camping trip.”





	But There Was Only One Bed

In many ways Rey was like any other woman, covered in hair and full of teeth. In her new environment she blended in with spectacular ease. Just this morning she had picked up a new technique from the lumbering proboscis beast. Mouth full of grubs, fingernails full of dirt, she was warmed by the dappled light that filtered through the canopy and down to the overturned log on which she crouched. She was heartily enjoying this breakfast.

It had been two days since the shipwreck. The Falcon had just enough function left to run diagnostics and keep the lights on, but Rey had no idea how to get her flying again. She hadn't even figured out the root of the initial malfunction. Not that she could call herself particularly anxious to leap back into hyperspace and continue slaughtering. Perhaps that was selfish, but if being selfish meant she could leave her toes shoved in the mud a little longer, maybe that was something she deserved. Something she needed. 

Rey popped another grub into her mouth and tilted her head up to the speckled sunlight. She basked in it like a sleepy reptile, eyes closed and mouth smiling, savoring that juicy grub flavor. Everything here was so welcoming and warm and green. It was like being back in the womb. If wombs were green. 

“ _Rey!_ There you are!”

Her eyes flicked open and her smile grew. 

There would come a time when Ben Solo would entirely give up on keeping his clothes out of the jungle’s plethora of mud, but that time was not now. As he picked his way towards Rey, he placed each step with calculation. His best boots were at stake, and at this point it wasn’t as if the First Order was going to trip over itself to offer him a new pair.

This jungle was a menace, suffocating, sweltering, swarming with insects. It was a little like being back in the womb. He couldn’t wait to leap off of the tiny forgotten rock and get back to mindlessly slaughtering. 

“Rey, I made - are you eating bugs again?”

She swallowed, “Yeah?”

He folded his arms against his chest, and she stared at him unblinking. 

“I like the bugs. Don’t pout at me! You haven’t even tried a single one.”

Ben pulled his mouth into a taut line of disgust. “We don’t _have_ to eat bugs. I spent all of yesterday decimating multiple species so we could eat well. I made breakfast, and you’re out here slurping maggots in the mud again.”

_“Grubs."_

“Rey.”

“I finished off the maggots already.” She sprang off the log and stretched her legs. “Don’t be upset, you goof! It’s not like I’m going to pass up another breakfast. Come on.”

That provoked a little smile out of him. Like most of the expressions Ben had stored away, it was unbearably endearing. Rey could’ve easily bolted ahead, hopping from root to rock. She could’ve beat him back to the Falcon and left him to nurse his precious boots across the sludge, but she held back. To his ego’s delight she let him lead the way, but her’s was another selfish motive. 

As she was learning, the best vantage point was from behind. After all, it is only natural to stare at what is directly in front of a person, and if that subject happens to be her cohort’s voluptuous locks, then so be it. If he were to turn around and ask, “What are you staring at?” then _he_ would be the one at fault for strange behavior.

It was of course, an aspiration of Rey’s to accomplish something more than desperate staring. Oh to reach out, to run one’s hand through those twisting ebony waves. Seriously, how much time did he spend on his hair in the morning? Of course, she knew it was folly. It was not as if one could simply say, _‘Lovely weather we’re having! Could I play with your beautiful twirling locks?’ ‘Don’t forget to lock those hatches. Mind if I fluff your fibers?’ ‘Can I borrow ten credits? Can I borrow your hair?’_ She shuddered. Words would not be of service to her. 

To her viewing displeasure, the Millennium Falcon was not all that far away. A quick tunnel through the thicket, down the hill a bit and there they were. The Falcon waited for them just as she had landed - entangled in foliage and laying in a heap at the edge of a steep cliffside. Ben tread across the long trail of dirt she’d carved up and clambered aboard through the port-side docking ring. Rey trailed after, her head still pathetically humming with thoughts of hair.

“So... “ Ben began, “I figured we could eat in the cockpit this time. It would provide us with some natural lighting. Also the cargo holds are filled with corpses.”

“Haha, yeah… corpses.” Rey paused in the corridor, crouching down to check the little open shaft along the ventilation system. 

“Porgington’s awake! Hi Porgington!” The ship’s resident porg sat nestled in its giant makeshift nest of straw and hair and shreds of furniture. Rey scooped it up and pressed it to her cheek. Chirps and squeaks filled the corridor, and Ben lingered, staring down at the display with stiffness.

“I refuse to call him Porgington.”

“Alright, I will admit his name does sound a bit off in your accent.”

“ _My_ accent?”

She held the tiny creature up to him. “Look at him, Ben. I love this porg. So cute, so marketable, so endearing. Truth is, I want a hundred more of him, at least. I would die for this creature.”

She was so gentle with it. Ben inched off further down the corridor. 

“Look at you, Porgington. You’ve gone way overboard with that nest. It’s far too big for you.” Lovingly she tucked the porg back in its hidey hole, and she hurried to join Ben in the cockpit.

As usual, Rey took the left seat and Ben the right. Before them waited a tray spread with the meat of at least forty-five different animals. It was propped precariously on the front panel. Ben twirled his fingers together. “You don’t think I took it too far... do you? I only set out to make sure we had enough food to sustain ourselves. Who knows how long we’re going to be trapped out here.”

Rey pulled her face out of a charred rib cage, mouth entirely crammed with flesh and gristle. “This ish’shum bloody gud eatin’!”

He tilted his head away. “Yes… it is a bit bloody. I’m not very practiced at meal preparation.”

Rey spit out a wadded chunk of hair. “Are you kidding! I only know how to steep portions. This is amazing.” 

That set a gleam into him. He straightened himself on the seat. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

There is a kind of peaceful quiet that forms during a mealtime. For a still moment the pair sat in the bosom of this silence, Rey gnawed on a leg bone and Ben sipped a cup of water from the ship’s supply. Together they took in the mottled green view from the cockpit window. The Falcon’s starboard side faced the cliff, giving them a sprawling overlook of the valley below, and from there, the true mountain range, toothy spires forever clawing away from the horizon. The valley’s morning mist had all but burned off with the rise of the sun, so only the thinnest wisps remained, carrying with them their unusual yellowish tint. They floated through the canopy like lost ghosts.

It would be easy, Ben supposed, to get lost out there, to wander those hills forever. There was too much out there. There was an absolutely suffocating amount of too much out there, and he’d only seen the tip of it in all his scouting trips. At least it supplied him with a surplus of fleshy creatures to disembowel. 

“It’s so beautiful.” Rey set her decimated bone down on the tray. She leaned back, basking in the view of Ben’s hair.

He stared darkly out into the valley, breathing a sigh against his teeth. “It is uncharted territory, it is dangerous, and it will kill us if we let our guard down.”

He could be so melodramatic at times. Rey pushed herself up and took to the corridor. “Oh come on, Ben, just think of this as - _uh_ \- a vacation! I’ve never been on a vacation before, you know.”

Ben hurried after her. “Rey, this isn’t a vacation. We’re pissing in the woods, battling for our next meal, and being stalked by starved animals in the night. Technically that makes this a camping trip.”

“Well when you put it like that it sounds like I’ve been on a ‘camping trip’ for the last twenty odd years of my life.” She paused beside the port-side docking ring and made an about face, meeting his eyes. “But hey, I’ve never been on one with a cute boy before.”

Ben came to a sudden stop. Haha. That did it. Got those cheeks turning pink. Forced his eyes to dart off elsewhere like minnows scattering in a pond. What victory it was to watch him squirm. “ _Victory for the light side._ ”

“What - ?”

“- Uh, nothing.” She swooped next to him and gave him a boisterous slap on the back. “Listen up, eh, copilot? Go out there and hunt and forage and swing from vines - don’t you worry bout a thing. I’ll fix up the ship, and we’ll be back out there in no time. If you need me, just use the bond, yeah?”

His eyes focused ridgely on the ground. “Okay.”

Rey waved vigorously and sent Ben off on his way. What a sight that hair was, bouncing lightly in the breeze as he sulked off across the field, sparkling in the sunlight like a thousand million glimmering onyx. Onyxes? Onyxi?

She shouted after him. “See ya’ later, Benny boy!”

She shut the hatch with a deafening clank, and pressed a palm into her face. Was she coming on too strong? Not strong enough? She heaved a guttural sigh. That hair would be forever out of her grasp. Rey slumped back over to Porgington’s hidey hole. She pressed her back against the wall and let herself slide down defeatedly. 

“Oh Porgington. Ben is my closest friend, but the truth is it’s been a dream of mine to touch his hair ever since we met. Well, admittedly, that first time I just wanted to yank it out of his head... You know, maybe we crashed on this planet for a reason. This is the first time we’ve been out of the fight in, well, forever. Maybe the Force is giving me a chance to _change_ things. I just wish I knew how.

“You should’ve seen me this one time, haha. We were on Batuu and I was all, _‘Ben don’t move! There’s a huge beetle on your head!’_ It was a lie of course. A tactical move to get my fingers in the mane. Backfired horribly. He fell off a cliff.”

Rey turned to peek into her tiny friend’s nest. 

“What would _you_ do?”

The porg squeaked and flapped its nubby wings. It looked so tiny in that huge clump of roughage. 

“Wait a minute… you’re not making that all for yourself. You’re trying to attract a mate! Damn that’s… listen buddy. I’m really sorry Chewie ate your girlfriend. But thank you! You’ve given me a brilliant idea!”

Rey patted the porg’s head and dashed off. She was a woman on a mission.

-

It was nearly a quarter past noon, and Ben Solo was sitting in a tree. He had his legs pulled close to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. Below his perch, his tattered cape fluttered weakly in the breeze, giving him the appearance of a large black rag that had gotten tangled in the leaves. The trees of this planet were an impressive example of megaflora. They were absolutely massive. Even from his roost, Ben couldn’t quite make out where tree ended and sky began. Looking up that high just made him dizzy. The branches of the jungle trees grew naturally into those of their surrounding kin, forming an endless, mossy network above the mud and ferns and buds and spores that carpeted the ground. 

Ben cast his dark eyes down upon the scenery, but his scrutiny retreated inward. Habitually he peeked over his mental shoulder. He picked through his consciousness, turning it over, inspecting, searching. It was ritualistic, that much he could admit, but it was a ritual that had long kept him sane. Upon completion, he found himself alone. This brought relief, but not surprise. He had been free for months now. He pressed a hand against his forehead and allowed his thoughts a minute to breathe. What a novel concept that was, to sort through one's mind in private.

The Falcon was in good hands. Rey could fix a ship blindfolded. She could fix anything. With any luck they'd be off this stinking pit by tomorrow. Mildly he cursed himself for leaving her the task. He had every reason to know how to fix the Falcon. He'd practically grown up in it. Yet every time his father had started going off about Gelieg Strobes and Quadex cores young Ben would inevitably end up staring out the cockpit window. He had spent so many hours staring out that window. 

Hastily he cast those thoughts aside. Glancing down he saw that he had been fiddling with something. The crude black hilt of his lightsaber.

Then he caught a stray sound from across the forest floor, just a distant shuffle, but it signaled the presence of prey. Ben hung the saber back onto its belt hook. It was time to get back to work. Quietly he crept from branch to branch. He moved like a disease, black as rot and full of bad intentions. His instincts held true. Lumbering through the brambles came one of the planet’s giants. It was stocky and hairless and twice Ben’s height, truly a behemoth of a creature. He had killed two of them yesterday. 

He stared at the behemoth's beady black eyes. It had so little comprehension of its life, and it would have even less comprehension of its death. Ben tensed every band of muscle in his body and reached for the saber. Absently he let a chill creep into his mind, and he welcomed the cold anger that clouded his eyes. His brows pinched, his grip tightened, and his lips pulled back, leaving his teeth white and sharp and blaring. The blade unfurled with a hiss and sputter like a death rattle, fizzling sparks in every direction. 

He was ready.

However, despite his worst intentions, the day’s bloodshed would not be by his hand. He nearly fell head first out of the tree when the first proboscis beast pounced from the brush. Then came the next, then another, and then at least fifteen more. Ben recoiled back on his branch. The beasts surged from the shadows and piled atop the behemoth’s back until it vanished beneath their mangy, brownish fur. Tooth and screech and blood and claw. Dirt became dust, and the bellows from the behemoth became shrieks of anguish. Ripped from the air, they gave rise to a new sound: the smacking and slurping of the famished proboscis beasts as they set upon their kill. Ben merely watched the scene unfold in shock, for truly it was like nothing he had ever seen before. Those beasts could eat faster than Rey. 

Once finished, the beasts gathered back into a crazed stampede and charged off down the hill. The dust settled, and Ben loosened his grip on the branches. He dropped down from the tree and tread over to the remains. It wasn’t much to look at. There was little more than a skull clinging loosely to a stub of spine and a wide patch of bloodied dirt. He balled his hands into fists. Those wretched savages. That should have been _his_ kill. 

Cold rage cleaved his consciousness, squeezing his chest and filling his throat. He tore the lightsaber from his belt and shattered the behemoth skull into a burst of shrapnel. It wasn’t enough. He spun back to the tree. A great wave of fury crashed through his body, and he became a whirlwind of black ferocity and red light and teeth and rage. Burning, burning, burning, but loathsomely cold.

Finally - having spent his malice - the chill wafted out of his mind, and panting, Ben stepped back. Thin lines of smoke twirled up from the ravaged tree, followed by the sick smell of burnt bark. The blackened slashes blended into one massive web of scars. The tree would not live. He let his blade dissipate like a snuffed flame, and he dropped the hilt at his feet. 

“Stupid… you are so _stupid!_ ” 

For a moment he just lingered there, his feet paralyzed in the dirt like the stupid idiot he was. How easy it was to lie to himself sometimes. 

He had not come out here to hunt. He had come to kill. To murder and destroy, to revel and smolder in death as he had done for so many years. Restless child’s play. Now there was nothing left to kill, and there was nowhere left to run. Any reasonable person understood that mass extinction could only distract for so long.

Ben dropped to his knees. He let his eyes connect with the hilt of his saber, but it blurred until its rough metal outline blended into the dirt. Everything softened. Scabby leaves and thicket became a wash of green and brown. Even his own gloved hands meshed into his lap. Black on black. He knew how this would play out. The forest was quiet now, quieter than a grave, and in that silence it would only be a matter of time before he started pacing trenches into his mind. 

He huddled on the forest floor and strained to regain control, shivering in spite of the jungle sun. _Don’t think. Don’t think. Idiot. Coward. Monster._

How desperately he had hoped that submitting to the Resistance would bring him some peace. If not peace of mind, than at least peace with his actions, but he could not deny that so little had actually changed. First he had been Snoke's weapon and now he was Rey's, but he was a weapon all the same. He could fight and he could flee, but the horrors of the past would forever cradle his heart. 

He ran a hand through his hair and made an attempt to steady himself. He couldn’t afford to dwell on those kinds of thoughts. He had to calm down.

At least Rey was not Snoke. That which would enrage Snoke for days would often send Rey into howls of laughter. Not to mention the fact that she didn't sniff out his deepest insecurities while he slept. Ben couldn't deny that he was in much better hands.

And then there was his transition to the Resistance. The event should have been a terrible parade of shame, but somehow Rey's antics had turned it into an awkward homecoming. (He would never understand where she got all of those balloons.) Through it all, she had always been the only person able to stay in a room with him for longer than ten minutes. Sweet, gentle Rey. Dearest Rey who had come to him in his hour of need, who had so fondly dubbed him her copilot, who had saved him from that insidious beetle back on Batuu... Her selflessness astounded him. 

Ben wiped his eyes and picked up the lightsaber. Rey had called him ‘cute’ again. She called everything cute: the porg, BB-8, bugs, thimbles, rats, finger sandwiches. But deep down, Ben knew that he was more than just another finger sandwich to her. He saw it in her eyes whenever she hastily looked away after getting caught staring at the back of his head. There was no denying it, Rey was in love with him, but he could never allow himself to feel the same way. 

He lifted his head to the wounded tree and let its black lacerations burn into his mind. He was her copilot. Her colleague. Her friend. Rey’s presence fed a little candle of light in his chest, but it was crucial that he maintained a careful distance. He had hurt her enough.

Placidly he picked himself up and stole one final glance at the behemoth’s remains. It was odd. He had been so certain that the proboscis beasts were insectivores. He had also been certain that there were significantly less of them. Had he inadvertently killed off their main predator, leading to an explosion of the population and consequently mass starvation? If so, exactly how fast could those things breed? Ah well, such were the unforeseen consequences of ecoterrorism. 

Ben turned to leave the clearing, but the bloodied pawprints caught his eye. They were so frenzied, so utterly mad. They all went in one distinct direction. Downhill. 

The Millennium Falcon was downhill.

His breath caught in his throat and he froze. He would have to check on her. He squeezed his eyes closed and willed himself to concentrate. Fervently he reached out. Please Rey, please answer.

-

The crew quarters composed a tiny corner of the Millennium Falcon. Though she hardly had the exact measurements, Rey was reasonably sure they took up less floor space than her old hollowed out AT-AT. Nevertheless, they’d been a quiet place for Ben and Rey to hole up in during the past few weeks. There was always a warm beverage brewing on the little galley stovetop, and Ben put forth every effort to keep the bathroom some semblance of clean. 

The only trouble was that there were two beds, and every night Ben would crawl into his and Rey into hers. How terribly boring. Rey crossed the room and sat down on Ben’s bed. His wooly grey blanket had been thrown halfway across the pillow in what she could only assume was a form of anxious haste. Tactfully she memorized its exact positioning before taking two fistfuls of it and pressing it into her face. It smelled like old metal and soap, distinct and warm. Classic Ben smells. 

She rested her cheek to the fabric and stared out into their quarters. The room looked so different from his vantage point. Rey’s eyes wandered over to her own bed. Perhaps there were times when he gazed at her with his own longing. She snored. She hissed at people when they startled her. She could barely read, and the first time she saw a bar of soap she assumed it was candy. Perhaps not.

She dusted those thoughts away and reclined against the wall, all the while clinging to the blanket. Their nights together fluttered across her mind’s eye.

Needless to say it had been uncomfortable for the both of them at first. In the week following Ben’s surrender, she’d found him dozing off on the couch, insisting on staying out of her way. They had covered so much ground since those days.

Now they spent each night perusing each other’s deepest, most philosophical thoughts. Rey would press many questions such as, “Why does my leg get hot sometimes?” and “Do snails have a purpose?” She would ask, “Is the core of a planet technically a yolk?” and Ben would reply with something like, “Yes, because technically a planet’s core _is_ edible. Just not to us. And please don’t ask me what it would taste like.” Then Rey would ask what it would taste like, and Ben would immediately counter with a, “Have you taken a bath today?” To which Rey would pretend to have fallen asleep and begin snoring at cartoonish volumes. 

Rey smiled. They were good times, but there was room for improvement. 

She stood from the bed and reassembled the blanket exactly as it had lain. Things were going to change around here. Now she set her attention on her own bed. On the surface it was an underwhelming identical copy of Ben’s. Same limp pillow, same grey blanket, but missing the pleasant smells. In truth she’d always preferred her old hammock. 

Thoughtfully she considered her options. Sure, she could drag each mattress to the floor and push them together. One big nest, just like Porgington’s. However, she did not have the advantage of her species understanding the gesture. Stealth would be her ally for this operation, which was well enough. She was highly practiced in the art of a good sneak. 

Rey wove her fingers together and let a devious smile play over her face. Oh yes, it would be such a tragedy. Her mattress would be swiped away by a wiley proboscis beast, leaving her no place to rest her poor tired head. Except perhaps, the bed of a close friend. It was perfect. 

After a few short huffs and grunts, Rey stood back and beamed as she watched her mattress tumble down the cliffside and vanish into the valley a hundred yards below. A job well done.

Now she just had to practise her story. She’d put up a fight. She’d battled the proboscis beast. No - there were two of them. No, actually a whole horde. Yeah, a stampede. They didn’t specifically target the mattress, they turned the whole ship into chaos!

Rey crossed her arms and pursed her lips. Maybe she should have thought this through a little more thoroughly. She hurried back onto the Falcon. It certainly didn’t look like it had been ransacked by alien nose monsters. Ah well, there was no harm in putting forth a little extra effort in her charade.

So, like a reasonable and intelligent young woman, Rey walked back to the crew’s quarters and immediately set upon shredding the toilet paper with her bare hands. Next she moved to the galley. She grabbed a fistful of forks and threw them on the ground. The things one did for true love. Porgington came waddling over in the doorway, disturbed by the noise.

“Look Porgington! I’m being - spontaneous and - inspirational! Come jump - on Ben’s bed - with me!”

The porg only blinked. Rey sprang off the bed and landed next to her tiny friend.

“Where should we go next?”

Porgington squeaked.

“No, I think arson is a little too far. However…”

Rey plucked the porg up and set him atop her shoulder. The rampage was only beginning. She spun through the Falcon like a hurricane, really getting into character. Half the couch cushions landed in the engineering bay, the other half in the cockpit. Loose panels from the corridor lay scattered outside in the grass like dead soldiers. Porgington’s nest ended up in an actual tree. Rey was having an amazing time.

Giddily she sprinted through the building bedlam. What would be next? She dashed across the main hold and stopped in front of the cargo transfer hatches. Surely there was something in there she could throw on the ground. She pushed one of the hatch doors open, only to leap back in surprise at what spilled out on her feet. 

Bodies sat stacked upon bodies and more bodies. Layer after layer of gore, and all of it caked in blood. Porgington startled at the smell of it and fluttered off towards the corridor. Perhaps Ben really _had_ gone too far with his hunting trips. She would have to have a talk with him later. For now his quarry would be food for her facade. After all, if she really was a pack of crazed animals, a mountain of rotting flesh would be her first target. 

With the Force on her side, Rey began the process of hauling the nearest pile of corpses out of the ship. Try as she might, it was impossible to keep the blood off her clothes. By the time she was halfway finished, she was splattered with it. Not an ideal look for her, but it was just as well. It would add to the drama of the scene. 

She tried to envision the choreography as she went about her work. A few limbs in the corridor, a spray of blood across the boarding ramp, a line of guts strung across the back seats. She could almost picture Han leaping from the grave and snapping her neck, but perhaps he’d have sympathized with her cause. 

Heading outside, Rey flung a couple of heads up in the nearby branches, smeared some skin in the dirt, and tossed the rest off the cliff. Those would be the ones carried off by her opponents. At last, she felt ready. Filled with triumph, she leapt to the top of the Falcon and raised her fists to the sun for a celebratory whoop.

_“Ben Solo’s hair will be mine!”_ It felt like the right thing to whoop.

And then - as fate would have it - she was immediately contacted by that same Solo. He was nudging against her mind through their bond. She took half a glance at herself, splattered with blood, guts, and possibly some brain matter. Now was not a good time. She grimaced and brushed him away. Hopefully he’d assume she was in the bathroom or something. 

Rey hopped back down to the grass, and Porgington flapped out of the Falcon to meet her. 

“Hey buddy! Like the new decor?” 

His squeaks were louder this time, more assertive.

“Yeah… it is getting kind of stinky out here…” Actually, it was really starting to reek. The sun was not doing them any favors.

Porgington chirruped once more and flew off above the treeline. Just where was he off to? Had the smell gotten to him? Rey watched him fade into a tiny speck before letting her eyes fall down to the surrounding thicket. There stood a single proboscis beast. Perhaps the one from this morning?

“Hi there! I’m kind of framing your entire species - hope you don’t mind.” It didn’t move. “Just between you and me, I know you guys like bugs more than meat, but don’t tell Ben that. Haha.”

There was one more moment of silence before the beast pulled back its lips and sounded its cry. It was as if a floodgate had burst. Suddenly every cardinal direction was spurting forth proboscis beasts, forming a tidal wave of tawny fur and flabby snouts. Hundreds upon hundreds of them barreled towards the Falcon at top speed, and all with teeth bared.

“Well. Shit.”

-

At long last, Ben had given up on saving his prized boots from the jungle’s mud. Now he dashed straight through it, splashing and slopping, rushing back to Rey, and tailing the flurry of bloody pawprints that led the way. She hadn’t answered him. Technically, that could mean a few things. She could be asleep, she could be busy, she could be annoyed with him, she could be taking a dump, or she could be dead. Given the circumstances, he could not help but dive into worse case scenarios. He spotted the first of the Falcon’s wreckage. Through the gully of dirt he stumbled, past toppled trees and shredded brush, until finally the scene lay sprawled before him.

Rey stuck out as a flash of bright blue amid a field of teeth and claws. Her eyes blazed and her mouth gaped open as if caught in a scream, but over the cacophony of the proboscis beasts he couldn’t hear her. The beasts moved like one solid wave of starvation. She was holding her own, but there were so many of them. Ben tore off his cloak, lit his saber, and tunneled into the fray. 

Flesh collided with plasma as he sliced through beasts like hot sticks of butter. Hearing their death cries, a chunk of the horde broke off to charge him. Beasts sprang off the burnt bodies of their brethren and clawed for his face, but those that were not bisected had their organs crushed with the Force. Ben tore a savage line of gore across the battlefield, hurrying to Rey.

No matter how many he killed, there were more at his heels. Adrenaline buzzed through him as sweet hot blood sprayed on his clothes. They were biting at his ankles, howling, jeering, trying to get their teeth around his neck, but they were no match for him. He surged through their ranks like a manic demon, thrilled by the horrors that surged from his saber. A familiar chill crept into his mind, and willingly he let it.

Some of the beasts were growing wary now. A few peeled off from the brawl and retreated to the treeline. Others fell back to howl and spit at him, hackles raised, but they would not escape so easily. Now his ears were filled with the ring of battle, and his mind had sunk into numb rage. He pursued them with the wrath of every form of hell.

“Ben?”

He threw a glance over his shoulder. Rey had spotted him through the madness. She started to say something else, but her breath was knocked from her lungs when a beast slammed her from behind. 

Ben choked on a note of fear. Abandoning the stragglers, he rushed through the field of death. They were piling on her now, faster than she could regain her footing. There were so many bodies surrounding her. Far too many dead to wade through, and too many living to fight off in time. In an instant of decision he began to paralyze them with the Force. Living and dead, he froze them stiff as stones and began to leap across their backs like a ridiculous proboscis highway. One leapt for his feet, and he stunned it in midair. He pushed off from its snout and landed a few feet from Rey. 

There was a thunderous boom as he pushed a shockwave through the surrounding circumference of dirt. Many of the beasts fled. Some were buried. Rey took the opportunity to gut her last remaining attackers, and she yanked herself back up to her feet. 

She cleared her throat, “As I was _saying_ \- hi!”

Ben felt the smallest tug of a smile. “Hi, Rey.”

They each gave the other a nod and braced themselves. Back to back, blue and red. The remaining beasts howled deafeningly as they regrouped themselves, but Ben and Rey were ready.

There were no more blind spots to gnaw on, for the two humans fought as one creature. The beasts could not hope to pin one, for together they kept each other’s balance. Still they pressed for openings.

Rey took off two beasts’ heads and shot them into the mob as projectiles, scattering their foes, while Ben settled into a rhythm of hacking and slashing. He fought as fiercely as ever, but his focus had shifted from the bloodshed. Ben ducked when Rey ducked. Rey dodged when Ben dodged. Her back was so warm and solid against his. He could almost feel her heart slamming away against her ribs, her lungs working furiously to keep pace. Somehow the two could turn a duel into a dance, both nimbly following the other’s tempo.

He’d put her in danger. The thought was enough to make him nauseous, but as they fought it filled him. The field of teeth was the fruit of his wicked heart, and there was no denying it. 

Teeth bared and stance wide, Rey wielded one of the larger corpses as a battering ram, wiping it across her field of vision before passing it to Ben to continue the barrage on his side. He took the hint and slammed the body through the front line of beasts. With a buckling crunch he blew the corpse into bullets of bone that shredded through their enemies. Inwardly Rey fought a moment of jealousy. He was so good at this. Every second of his training displayed itself when they fought. Though she’d never admit it, he often made her reckless improvisation feel like… reckless improvisation. 

Hollowly, she wished she had more to offer, for it was beginning to seem like impulse got her into more problems than solutions. The mob was a prime example. They never would have targeted the Falcon if she hadn’t thrown those corpses everywhere. She had to get to the ship, had to make sure that mattress was still in place! There was still time for this fight to prove itself a minor setback. She’d couldn’t give up yet, she wouldn’t! Things were going to change!

At last, the surviving beasts began retreating, the wounded were limping off, and the dust was starting to clear. Ben and Rey lowered their sabers and stood panting in the evening light. 

Rey turned to him, “The Falcon! There’s more in the Falcon! They’re probably wrecking the place!”

She grabbed Ben’s hand and yanked him along to the docking ring. The door was wide open and leaking wild howls from inside.

“You go straight,” said Ben. “I’ll keep left.”

Rey nodded and they parted ways. She made a beeline for the bedchamber. Sparing a few glances around the corridor, she couldn’t entirely tell where her own rampage ended and where the proboscis beasts’ began, but that didn’t matter now. There was only one thing on her mind. The beasts could have the silverware. They could have the couch cushions, the prized family heirlooms, or even the water supply. As long as they didn’t have - 

_“The mattress!”_

Surely enough, Ben’s mattress was missing. She stood in the doorway with her hands clutching her hair. Sometimes she was such an idiot she left herself in a state of shock. 

As if sensing her stupor, a beast sprang from the bathroom stall and leapt towards her face. She raised her saber in the nick of time, and the beast fell dead on the floor. Unfortunately, now was not the time for shock. She had to find that mattress. 

Racing through the ship, she searched with building desperation. She killed three beasts that were tearing apart an escape pod, and two more that were devouring Ben’s kills in the third hold. They’d left little more than bones. The more Rey searched, the more destruction met her eyes. It was an ever unfolding nightmare, and there was no mattress in sight.

She pressed on until she bumped into Ben beside the boarding ramp. 

“It’s not looking good,” he said. “I downed at least ten that were polishing off our food supply, not to mention - ”

His words died on his tongue, and he stared down the boarding ramp. Rey followed his eyes. 

She so desperately wished she could crawl under her covers and pretend like this day hadn’t happened, but there was only one bed, and that bed was in the jaws of the very last proboscis beast. The beast sat on the edge of the starboard-side docking ring. The door was wide open, and the mattress dangled precariously above the valley below.

Ben and Rey hung in a moment of hesitation. The beast stared at them, and then, it opened its mouth. A hoarse squawk left its jaws, as did the mattress, and Rey reeled in horror as her hopes and dreams plummeted into the void. Ben raced down the boarding ramp and blew the beast out of the ship. Rey hurried after, and together they stared down into the green abyss. The mattress was gone.

Ben returned his saber to his belt. “Well that was... eventful.” 

Rey fell to her knees and gripped the edge of the ramp. It was over. All of her hard work, her careful planning, her raw determination, it had all been for naught. “Maybe you could… you could levitate me down and - and then I could levitate _you_ down, and then so on and so forth, and we could - we could _fly_ down into the valley and…”

“We are not going to try that again. Besides, now we have to clean this place up.” 

Rey turned to face him, her eyes wide as full moons.

_“Clean?”_

-

First, they cleaned their wounds. The Falcon’s minimal medical supply was enough for bruises and scratches. Fortunately no serious damage was done. Next, there was the issue of the gore, and truly it was everywhere. Solemnly, Rey volunteered to mop the inside of the Falcon, and Ben took to tossing the proboscis beast corpses off the cliff and into the yellowed fog below. While plucking the guts from the trees, he located Porgington’s poor nest, and delighted, the porg returned to his hidey hole. Meanwhile, Rey painstakingly picked up each piece of silverware and scrubbed at the blood stains on the ceiling. Finally, Ben salvaged a couch cushion that had been hurled into a shrub and picked his cloak up off the lawn. From the distance he noticed that the ship looked a little closer to the cliffside. That probably wouldn’t be an issue.

Rey trudged outside and dumped her bucket of bloodied water in the dirt. With a huff she pressed her weary eyes into the nasty little puddle that formed. She’d trusted the Force and she’d trusted her instinct, and both had been horribly misleading. The Force needed them as partners - as weapons - nothing more and nothing less. Besides, it wasn’t like Ben was shoving himself across any boundaries. She looked up to the sky, and sucked in a breath. The sun had set, yielding to a pink, cloudless dusk, and the first tiny moon had peeked above the treeline. It would have been nice. To be wanted.

“I think we may have to stop for now.” Here came Ben. In one arm he carried the sole couch cushion, with the other he readjusted his cloak. “I fear we may have spent too much of our water supply on cleaning.”

Well that was a relief. Rey dropped the bucket where she stood and followed Ben inside. In the doorway she cast a parting glance at the field, and then she sealed the hatch behind them. 

They formed an exhausted, bloodstained procession to the main hold, and with a deafening plop of defeat, Ben returned the cushion to the couch. 

“Maybe we’ll find the others tomorrow,” Rey offered flatly.

Ben clasped his hands together and sighed deeply. He took a seat on a bare part of couch. May as well get this over with.

“Rey, this was all my fault.” He stooped his head and let his hair fall into his face. “All of it. I threw nature into disarray with my killings, and I put us in danger - I put _you_ in danger.”

Rey stood stiffly and stared at him. Could that be true? Was the blame not hers alone?

“I’m sorry.” He sucked in a breath and hung in the moment. He had ration enough to know that should’ve been the end of it, but words filled his lungs and clawed up his throat. “I want to believe that things are better now, but - but being here, in this ship... I don’t know what to do - don’t know what to think. I don’t want to think, but I - Rey, I _want_ my anger, I _need_ it - but I don’t want to hurt you… ”

His voice became smaller and brittler until it broke off entirely. Rey’s mouth hung agape, and she took a seat next to him. He wouldn’t look at her.

“Ben, Ben! You’re not gonna hurt me! I can kick your ass, remember?” She flexed her arms for emphasis. 

Slowly he pulled his head up, and he turned to face her. His eyes, once fierce and blazing, had been reduced to two brown puddles. He looked dreadfully tired, with the dark circles beneath his eyes pulling his whole complexion towards a shade of grey. It was just about the saddest expression she had ever seen in her entire life. It annihilated her. 

She threw her hands into the air. “Ben, look, it wasn’t - ! It’s not _entirely_ your fault, okay! The… the attack.”

His pinched his brows in confusion. She smashed a palm to her forehead and glued her eyes to piece of tubing on the other side of the room.

“I um… So it happened like this. I kind of - might of - threw your corpses all over the lawn. That’s… that’s what attracted the beasts to the ship.”

It took him a moment to process that one, giving her time to brace herself for his response. He leaned back a bit, grazed his eyes across the room, and rubbed his nose. His voice was unmistakably crestfallen. “You know, if you didn’t like my cooking, you could’ve just said so.”

Rey nearly fell out of her seat. “No! No! I love your cooking!” With an unbearably heavy heart, she realized that she was losing her battle against the truth. Defeated, she resigned to her fate. “Ben, the truth is, I tossed the corpses because… I wanted to play with your hair.”

“...What?”

“Long story - don’t ask.”

Humiliated, she scooted to the farthest (and only cushioned) seat on the couch. She was so gross. So needy. She succumbed to her shame and folded herself into a gross little cube. Ben had never seen her quite so defeated. The sight took him aback more than the surreality of her confession.

He scooched a bit closer, hoping to coax her out. “Why didn’t you just… ask?”

She became a smaller cube. In the silence that followed, she picked her words carefully, shakily. She had to swallow twice just to start the flow. “Ben, I’m… I know I’m really good at most things. I’m pretty amazing actually. I’m really good at sparring, I’m great at foraging, and I can hold my breath for forty-two seconds. You know anyone else that can do that?”

“I don’t actually.”

“It’s pretty great, but the things I’m good at complement the things that I’m terrible at in a parade of cruel irony.” She sucked in a breath, desperately rifling for words. “On… on Jakku, you don’t ask the scrap to climb into your bag, you don’t ask the sand to shake itself out of your boots, and you don’t ask Teedo to stop cutting you in line every single goddamn day. You just pummel him and move on. Look, I wanted to… I’m sorry, I - shit - I just didn’t want you to think I was - _weird_.”

He scooted closer still. “Rey, I know you’re weird. You're the only human I've ever met that eats grubs of their own free will.” Then he noticed his hand. It was extending towards her. Chiding himself, he became torn between yanking his hand back to its place and proceeding with it to Rey’s shoulder. Distance. He hung onto the word, staring at his hand as fear bloomed in his heart.

Muffled by her cubed shape, Rey retorted, “You're just saying that to spare my feelings.”

“No, I'm - I'm serious about that." Bitterly, he drew his hand back to his chest. "Rey, I don't mind your weirdness. It just comes with the territory of your… particular upbringing. I understand that."

Rey unfolded herself a bit and met his eyes. “Well… if we were to - I don’t know - pretend for a moment that I _did_ ask. How would you respond?”

Ben rounded his shoulders and let his gaze fall into his lap. He could feel a flush spreading across his face. Would that infringe the distance? Perhaps not. It would be Rey’s hands instead of his own angry claws. Her gentle, tiny lady hands. He could trust her, but could he trust himself? Would it matter? He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, but he could feel her energy all around him. She was hanging there, starved for his response, tensely waiting as the seconds built. It was Rey who wanted to bridge their distance, and understandably so. Poor sweet Rey. How could he deny her? Especially after she'd so generously changed the subject. “I think… I probably would’ve said yes.”

_“What!”_

“I would’ve said yes. I mean, what’s the harm?”

Well, that could’ve saved her a lot of time. Rey shifted to cross her legs and sat facing him. She was grinning ear to ear, eyes bright, posture flawless. He pulled on a smile and shook his head. After trial and tribulation, struggle and strife, her time had finally come. All the pain of her humiliation was immediately forgiven in her mind, as if a debt had been paid or a chain shaken off. Never had she felt so alive. Ben Solo turned to sit with his back facing her, relinquishing his flood of black curls to her eager grasping fingers. Rey cracked her knuckles deafeningly. She was honoured, touched, humbled. Euphoria seized her, and, trembling, she reached out. The gap between hair and fingertip shrank. She was… almost… there....

He was so still. Her hand hesitated. There was a question left unsaid, and it hung in the air like the stink of a thousand rotting corpses. The bracket of her perception expanded to take in the entirety of her friend. Ben was hunched over, stiff and distant. She could feel his energy dissipating through the room, thinning out and blowing away like air in a vacuum. A first glance could’ve painted him as a dark stain on the furniture. She let her fingers curl into her palm. Ben sat as plainly in front of her as the nose on her face, but try as she might, she couldn’t reach him.

Rey pulled her hand away with a sickening amount of reluctance, and, with her jaw set, she stood from her wonderfully cushioned seat and shimmied between the couch and table. She sat down again on the other side of Ben. Hands in her lap, she faced him.

“Are you - you know - okay?”

Her voice seemed to pull him back to himself. His limpid eyes crept up to her face and for a moment, simply hung there. Finally, he spoke, and in the usual Ben fashion, he met her question with a question.

“Are _you_ okay?”

His counter brushed against something tucked away in her mind. A laugh spasmed from her throat.

“Of course I’m okay,” she said. She smiled eagerly and waved a hand.

“We’re okay,” he affirmed this with a stiff nod, and quickly she bobbed her head in return. A calmness dusted on the surface of their faces as they accepted this new fact in unison. Of course they were okay. They were all-powerful space deities which held the fate of their relationship - and to a slightly less important extent: the entire universe - in their impulsive, irascible, grubby, neurotic hands. What could be more okay than that? They nodded until the truth of their collective okay-ness was sufficiently pounded into the atmosphere.

Then a stillness drew into the cabin space. For the first time they felt the chill of the metal on which they sat, and they heard the silence that followed the death of the conversation. It was an entirely different flavor of silence than that of their mealtimes. It was a hollow thing, restless and weeping like a wound left untreated. They sat in this silence and stared at each other, allowing the lines between themselves to blur. With a gesture of permission from the other party, they began falling into the others mind. Their smiles broke away. Rey could feel the cloud of his anger in the room: heavy, numb, and cold. It hung above them like a dense fog. Ben dug into it, gripped at it, clambered to wretch it away, but its presence was undeniable. It tore a shiver from her, but there was something else. Something thin and gasping, but sinister. A hot surge of shame piled on the floor and threatened to fill the room like sand in an hourglass. Rey’s instant urge was to cover it, to leap upon it and blot it out before Ben could see, but the truth of its existence was undeniable. It would drown her should she begin the attempt.

Their respective storms tore the silence apart, setting a fierce buzz into their ears, but neither pushed away from the connection. Like vermin they burrowed through the other’s spreading ugliness, tunneling, searching. She could feel him stepping across her thoughts. He was cautious, tentative, but she allowed him passage. Rey’s mind was a noisy place. She seemed to keep every thought directly at the forefront, regardless of its relevance. He could feel her delight at the glade that morning, and faintly he could taste a trace of what he could only imagine was grub in his mouth. It was fanfare. He pushed it aside and pressed on. 

Meanwhile, Rey took her own trek through Ben’s consciousness. There were so many thoughts hidden away, buried deep. She couldn’t find anything from the current day, or even the current moment. Ben’s mind presented itself as a barren, icy wasteland. Here and there it was pockmarked, scarred from an old parasite. Rey had seen these scars before. With a level of hesitation, she followed the trail.

Their storms proved to merely veil the surface, for the deeper they traveled, the more the clouds ebbed. There was something much quieter inside of Ben and Rey, past the howl and over the emptiness. It was something so old and so horrible that it breathed a life of its own, and they were getting close. At last they met somewhere underneath their consciousnesses, where it slept, and together they watched it. It was a familiar yet nameless fear. A fear that crashed over the pair in the way a wave whittles a rock. It was watching them too.

In an instant they fell back into their bodies. Rey was shuddering, Ben was shivering, and the two were each clinging to the other in frightened desperation. Neither knew at what point their physical bodies had collided, not that it mattered. It was the gravity of their fear that had pulled them together, and its weight that kept them from pulling apart. Her arms were squeezed tightly over his shoulders, both fists full of cloak. His own arms tucked beneath Rey's to draw her as close to his chest as he could without asphyxiating her. 

Rey’s mind was whirling itself out of kilter. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid anymore. This was all wrong. Worse than the fear was the confusion it ensued. Like a dull memory, she could see its outline and feel its age, but try as she might she couldn’t place a name to it. Couldn’t a girl just enjoy her vacation? The fear pushed her mind back to the field of teeth, forcing a confrontation. She bore her own responsibility for the attack, and that fact remained relevant despite Ben's actions. It was becoming clear to her: she really had to learn how to communicate like a functional human being. 

Then her focus wafted down to the sight of Ben’s back. The fear she had seen was not simply her own, but something they shared. There was something horribly wrong with Ben, something outside of the obvious myriad of things wrong with him. 

_‘I’ll help you.’_ They were her own words, but only now was she beginning feel their weight.

Rey pressed her face into his shoulder. Ben could feel his whole body tense as she sank into him. Being in his arms only seemed to magnify her littleness. Rey couldn’t exactly be described as fragile, but from this perspective he was immediately drug back to that fateful night. The night he abandoned the shell of Kylo Ren once and for all. It was crystal clear to him: killings were a thing of the past now. He couldn’t go on like this, and he wouldn’t. There had to be another way to wring out his anger, and no matter what it took, he would find it. He drew a ragged breath and tried to focus on Rey’s form in his arms. There was an unsaid _‘or else’._

At least he wasn’t alone with his storm. He had seen Rey’s too, and the memory of it pulled his face taunt. Were Rey’s fears something she had hidden from him, or something she had stuffed behind her mental parade of bread and circuses? He squeezed her ever so gently. Though he did not understand her torrents, he would do his best to keep her afloat. They would get through this together. 

Wordlessly, breathlessly they each grounded the other, willing themselves back into the current plane. Rey’s death grip eased off of Ben’s cloak, and she passed a palm over his shoulder, offering a small rub. He was cold. Colder than it seemed like he should have been. It could have been the night air transmitting its chill into the ship. 

Somehow the atmosphere of night reinforced the Falcon’s inner gloom. Though the emergency lights still glowed their same consistent yellow, they only succeeded in making the cabin’s lingering shadows all the darker. Again the silence waxed into their awareness, punctuated only by the pair’s gentle breathing. It demanded attendance. Rey was the first to speak. 

"I feel like the Force put us on this planet for a reason.” It was a good first step. Now to follow up. “I think it wants us to… change...”

“That’s a very keen observation,” he said. “I think it sums up the situation perfectly.”

Rey breathed out long and hard and let herself sink exhaustedly down to the unwelcoming platform of the couch. Her back met the metal and she pulled Ben along with her. He became a giant heavy blanket of sorts and tucked his head beneath her chin. Suddenly he found his eyelids sagging.

“It wants us to grow up.” She voiced the statement and let it float around the room a minute. Somewhere in the shadows that the yellow couldn’t reach, there was an _‘or else’_. 

Ben murmured something in agreeance. Was he falling asleep? He never fell asleep first. Rey moved a hand over his shoulder and up to the black waves that buffeted her cheek. A single strand brushed against her forefinger. Like a ribbon of space. She took to idly petting his head and wondering how exactly her life had reached this point. The moment was far from as intoxicating as her fantasies. Ben was horribly clammy, and he had only now stopped trembling. He smelled like warm socks, but he also smelled of the day’s gore and sweat. He was very soft against her chest, but he weighed at least a million pounds. Her legs were already starting to fall asleep. She toyed her hand through a section of curls, careful to skirt around a tangle, and finally she rested her cheek to his head. Tonight, she was the new bed. It wouldn't be practical, but it felt right.

Bundled in her arms, Ben went as limp as a doll. It was quite possibly one of the top six most relaxing moments of his entire life. The word ‘distance’ exited his vocabulary, and he pushed into her affection the way a root seeks groundwater. He realized how tired he was. It was a different breed of tired than usual. This was not a bitter fatigue, but a calming drowsiness. There was something unbelievably welcoming about it. And there, in the peaceful warmth of Rey’s embrace, a bold new thought bubbled out of Ben’s sleepy consciousness. 

“...Rey?” His voice was groggy and muffled.

“Hm?”

“Could I play with _your_ hair?”

He felt her freeze. A long moment swung past, and then - 

“Hm… No.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest fic I've written so far, and god diddly shit did it take me awhile. The series is intended to be a trilogy, but we'll see how that goes!!! Will Ben and Rey ever escape the jungle planet? Will they ever get their act together? How the fuck did they get here in the first place, I mean, seriously, weren't y'all enemies? Will I have the focus to actually finish something??? These questions MIGHT be answered!


End file.
